Catherine Dubourdieu receives ERC Advanced Grant
Catherine Dubourdieu: The physicist and materials scientist receives the ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros over five years for her project LUCIOLE. © Materials Research Society USA
Prof. Dr. Catherine Dubourdieu heads the Institute “Functional Oxides for Energy-Efficient Information Technology” at HZB and is Professor at the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry division at Freie Universität Berlin. The physicist and materials scientist specialises in nanometre-sized functional oxides and their applications in information technologies. She has now been awarded a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for her research project “LUCIOLE”, which aims at combining ferroelectric polar textures with conventional silicon technologies.
With its ERC Advanced Grant format, the European Research Council enables outstanding scientists to conduct pioneering and groundbreaking high-risk research. An ERC Advanced Grant is considered one of the highest awards for experienced researchers.
The project LUCIOLE focuses on ferroelectric nanometer-size oxides, which can host exotic polar textures such as vortices or skyrmions. With a wealth of potential emergent properties, whirling topological polar nanodomains could lead to novel devices, for example ultra-compact memories that store more than a terabyte per square inch. “We want to pave the way to future low power nanoelectronics based on topological defects” says Catherine Dubourdieu.
Monolithically integrated polar textures on silicon will be created and investigated on a nanoscale with state-of-the-art microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. These engineered polarization patterns will be embedded into ultra-scaled devices to study their manipulation and dynamics under electric field.
"We have known about the phenomenon of ferroelectricity for a good hundred years. But it is only in recent years that exotic polar textures have been unveiled. This opens up exciting possibilities for revolutionary new materials and devices. This is definitely the best time to be at the forefront of this field of research," says Dubourdieu.
LUCIOLE: Layering, Understanding, Controlling and Integrating Ferroelectric Polar Textures on Silicon.
News from the ERC
With ERC Grants, the European Research Council supports outstanding scientists who want to implement risky but potentially groundbreaking research ideas. An ERC Advanced Grant is considered one of the highest awards for experienced researchers.
- AI agents deliver results – but do they reason scientifically?A research team co-led by Kevin Maik Jablonka from the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena (HIPOLE Jena) and N. M. Anoop Krishnan from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi has developed Corral, a new benchmark for AI agents in science. The preprint “AI scientists produce results without reasoning scientifically” has been published on arXiv (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.18805). The analysis shows that current systems can execute scientific workflows and deliver results; however, they often do not follow the basic principles of scientific testing and reasoning.
- Magnetic field during catalyst synthesis triples ammonia yieldApplying an external magnetic field during the synthesis of CoFe₂O₄ electrocatalysts triples the ammonia yield during electrocatalytic conversion. The magnetic field alters the surface states of the spinel oxide thin films, making catalytically active sites more accessible. In the journal 'Advanced Functional Materials', a team led by Marcel Risch at HZB and Sanjay Mathur at University of Cologne demonstrates a scalable strategy for developing next-generation electrocatalysts for efficient and sustainable chemical production.
- Materials chemistry shapes the future of catalysisThe synthesis of materials can serve as a tool for developing smart, adaptive electrocatalysts. This rapidly evolving field of research involves in-situ analytics, data-driven discoveries and autonomous robotics. These new approaches could accelerate the discovery of long-lasting and efficient catalysts for future energy conversion and the decarbonisation of the chemical industry. A recent article by Dr Prashanth Menezes and his team in the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie provides an overview of this research.